Give and Take (poly) (bxb)

Fourteen

Diana stares at me with intimidation in her eyes. Her lips are the red of fresh blood. Hair cut into a perfectly straight bob, sharp corners, and deep black.

"Your form is decent." She speaks, not moving her eyes from my body as she looks me up and down from every angle. She grabs my arm hard enough to leave the skin reddened behind her touch. "It could definitely be stronger, more stable." She kicks downwards, the inside of her foot tapping my shoe lightly. It's to get me to move into a tighter position, yet it just ends up sending me off balance. This amuses her; I can see it in her eyes but nowhere else on her face. Now I know where Von gets his emotional complexity from, granted they aren't directly related.

"She did well against the TLs the other day. She has a lot of potential." I don't know what alternative universe I've slipped into, but Von praises me.

I'm a mess. I can't tell which is hotter. When he's talking down on me, belittling me, and watching over my every move with his cold condescending eyes. When he takes it out on me later, choking me and pounding into me that much harder, punishing me and denying me of orgasms until he sees fit. Or when he's looking after me, taking note of my feeling and apologizing for taking things too far. When he's pressing his fingers into my skin and putting my pleasure first. I think I love it all.

The other three men are lying aimlessly around the training room. Romero is stretched out on a sofa. L is leaning against a wall, and Seven is sitting on the counter while waiting for Diana's next order.

She has been treating him like trash all morning. Ordering him to bring her water, then her lipstick, then more water with less ice this time, even though she brought three servers with her. I tried to jump in and do something for her, and she scolded me. I just hate seeing Seven get treated like the red-headed stepchild for no apparent reason.

I noticed early on the discord between the two. At our first meeting, she hit him the hardest. I still remember the ear-piercing sound he made from beside me. It hurt me that he did nothing but take it from her, the same thing he's doing now.

"How so?" Diana's words bring me back to the present day.

"Mia's smart, and her aim is getting better." Von doesn't look at me as he continues to speak fondly of me, and I'm glad because his words are making me blush.

"I'll need to see it myself. Your standards are inherently lower than mine, son." Diana speaks down on everyone as usual. She reaches into our large chest of weapons and pulls out a gun before handing the heavy metal to me without much attention. I watch her body sway and listen to her heels click as she makes her way across the room, presses a button, and makes a cardboard cut out body equipped with numbered lines for shooting practice appear.

Fuck.

Von lied earlier and now I have to pay the price. To think I was grateful for his bragging on me. He probably knew this was going to happen all along.

"Go," Diana urges me, not a speck of encouragement on her face.

This is exactly what I don't need. I didn't even want to be trained by Von, so I never in a million years will want to be trained by his bitchy adoptive mother.

I ignore the urges in me to admit I don't know what the hell I'm doing and probably never will. I move my finger to the trigger and hold the gun up. Something sick registers within my mind. Diana is standing awfully close to the target.

Maybe she's holding all four of these men hostage. Maybe they actually want to get out of this gang, Von made it seem that way at one point.

But If I miss, she'll have me euthanized. What am I even thinking? This is Von's mother, L's mother; she's known the men for too long. If they wanted to kill her and if it was possible, they would have. I'm an idiot.